Regret

Guest Author - Amy Packham

Never regret anything that made you smile

Someone used this quote as one of their facebook status updates. I liked the idea of it, and I think this is because most quotes that we read about regret are associated with negative things. We might regret choices we have made in bad situations, or regret things we have said when under pressure but I like the idea that although things may change and we may feel differently to how we used too, we should not regret something just because we have moved on.

I guess this could be applied to a lot of life situations that people will endure. Because when you first read this quote it doesn't make sense, why would we regret something that made us happy? If we had a previous relationship which ended for various reasons, we should not regret it just because it ended, but we should be happy that it happened, because that will have been a point where that relationship made us happy.

Similarly if we are in a job or career that when we initially began, was something we loved, but ended up being something we hated... we should not regret it as at the beginning it was something we wanted to happen.

There are a lot of things in life that don't make us smile, that can't make us smile and that we just have to get on with so if something, in the past, no matter how we feel about it now, did make us that little bit happy, why should we regret it. Things change and just because this happens, it shouldn't incur us to regret things that happened before they changed. Regret seems to be something that a lot of people use, when they are mad or angry it seems to come naturally to regret something even if once it made us a happy person. As we grow older, as we experience new things, there will be bigger and better things to make us smile. However I don't think we should regret smaller things that might not be as good, but still made us happy at the time.

It is bad to live in regret, although sometimes it is unavoidable but I think sometimes people need to think seriously if they do regret something when they know at one point in their life it did make them happy.